Be Careful What You Wish For by Jeffrey Archer

Picking up where Best Kept Secret left off, this is book #4 in Jeffrey Archer's Clifton Chronicles series.  At the end of the previous book there is a serious car accident and you know one of the young men travelling in the car has been killed and the other is alive.  But which one lives and which one dies?

You find out the answer pretty quickly once this book starts, and the story of Clifton/Barrington family continues.

I found this book to be much more enjoyable than the previous book.  Where the previous book seemed like a collection of short stories, this one had more threads that wove through the whole book, which helped keep my interest better.

But as far as Jeffrey Archer books, I would still say this is far from his best (First Among Equals).  This book is full of stock market trading and board room meetings which dragged a bit.  The family company decides to get into the luxury cruise ship business and their enemies start plotting to bring them to ruin.  Will the ship get built?  Will the business succeed or fail?  Who will be the chairman of the company to lead the business in the right direction.  I'm not a lover of books about big business, and I've hated being a part of board meetings when my previous job required them, so this really wasn't my thing.

Still, I've grown attached to these characters and it's interesting to see how their personal lives develop. But I feel like their stories are mostly told by now.  There will be a fifth book next year.  I hope this is the end of it.  If you're reading the series, keep going, but if you haven't started, I think you can find better series out there.

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

I am so sad that we are now done the whole Chronicles of Narnia.  We read the end of The Last Battle tonight and now the whole series is done.

I can't say enough about what an amazing experience it was to read these books again with my kids and to see their reactions to the stories that I've loved for so long.  They listened to every detail and loved trying to guess what was going to happen next in each book.  They fell in love with the characters and feel like they've made new Narnian friends.  There were times when they were jumping for joy, cheering, and clapping as we read a new victory for the "good guys".  There were times when they were sad, and even times when we had to think of funny stories before bed because they were scared by what we'd read (the description of Tash in The Last Battle for example).

This final book tells the story of the end of Narnia, after a battle with Shift the Ape and some Calormene soldiers who are trying to take over Narnia.  Shift dresses a donkey up to look like Aslan and so gets all the creatures doing his bidding.  There are only a few who remain loyal to the real Aslan, and Jill and Eustace are pulled in from England to help fight this final battle.

I think the last page of this book is one of my all-time favourite endings in any book I've read.  The last chapter was filled with so many reunions with characters from earlier books that the kids were going out of their minds with excitement.  It was just such a great way to finish the series.

Now I really don't know what to read next.  They just want to go back and start the whole series again, but I want to move onto something new.  I can't convince Wesley to go for Anne of Green Gables (too girly), so I'm trying to find something they'll both enjoy.  I'm thinking of Charlotte's Web.  I'm not a Tolkien fan myself, so I don't really want to do The Hobbit.  I'd appreciate any suggestions!

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

I enjoyed this book.  What a light, fun summer read.  It's not going to be a literary classic, but if you're looking for something light to take along on your vacation, I recommend this one.

Martha Andersson is a resident of the Diamond House nursing home in Stockholm.  After being taken over by new owners, there have been cutbacks to the care at Diamond House making life pretty miserable for Martha and the other residents there.  Some of her lifelong friends, Brains, Rake, Anna-Greta and Christina are in there with her, and they need to come up with a plan to make things better.  They've been cut back to one meal a day, with a few snacks, no alcohol, no outside time, no recreation and a limit on the amount of coffee they can drink!  How can they live like that?

One night, Martha and Brains watch a documentary about the prisons in Sweden and the quality of life experienced by the prisoners there.  The prisoners get three square meals a day, daily outside time and the opportunity to take classes.  Martha quickly realizes that life is better in prison than in the nursing home and starts making plans so that she and her friends can end up there.

Being new to the crime lifestyle in their late-70's and early-80's, they've got a lot to learn, but they learn quickly and soon begin their life of crime.  This funny story follows their escapades through their successes, failures and the attempts by police to determine who is behind this new crime ring.

Again, it's not classic literature, but it's fun.  If you liked, "The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and then Disappeared", you'll like this one.